Former Pitt star gets his NBA chance
Michael Young would often turn to a mental checklist in the days and weeks leading up to the NBA draft.
Though he led the ACC in scoring last season at Pitt, averaging nearly 20 points per game, Young knew a series of factors were working against his dream of reaching the NBA.
He was a senior in a rare line of work where the age of 22 may seem old. He played on a team with a losing record, which removed a bit of the luster from his striking stat line. Most of all, he was a player trapped on a positional island, one who didn’t fit the prototype of what many consider to be a small forward or power forward at the next level.
“When you watch enough basketball and you play basketball long enough, you know there are sometimes things that are out of your control,” Young said.
Young didn’t believe he would be drafted, but the Duquesne native never worried or succumbed to the doubt that could have easily consumed him. Now, armed with a two-year, two-way contract he signed with the Washington Wizards on July 5, a deal that provides him with a measure of security few undrafted free agents enjoy, Young is in an advantageous position that may have not seemed probable several weeks ago.
“I look at this contract not as security or not what I always worked for, but more as an opportunity to get what I feel like I deserve,” Young said. “I’ve got to keep working and keep building, kind of like how I did in college.”
Before he could find peace, Young first had to endure some uncertainty.
Despite a decorated senior season, Young did not participate in the Portsmouth Invitational, an annual tournament that serves as a showcase for the top graduating seniors in college basketball.He was not extended an invitation to the NBA draft combine.
In a nine-week stretch from March through May, Young relocated to Miami and trained daily. He underwent extensive strength and conditioning drills, practiced his shot and worked in half-court situations modeled after sets that various NBA teams run. The regimen was built around the central idea of molding Young into a wing capable of excelling in a pro game increasingly focused on speed and spacing.
“Having the opportunity at the university playing for [former Pitt coach] Jamie [Dixon] kind of prepared him for that level, prior to this past year, when Coach [Kevin] Stallings allowed him to shoot the ball a little bit more freely,” said Tony Falce, who trained Young at Elite Skills Training in Miami. “Mike was able to get both aspects of the game in college. We tried to take that and bring it to the pro level, which is shooting NBA jump shots, screen and rolls, pick and pops. A lot of that comes down to understanding how to spread the floor.”
While in Miami, Young slimmed down from 248 pounds, his weight for much of the 2016-17 season, to about 230 pounds. Once teams began working him out and saw his svelte frame in person, small forward — or just the wing in the increasingly position-less NBA — became a natural spot for the 6-foot-9 prospect.
“Whenever teams started seeing me, it was kind of like they were not so much shocked, but more so impressed with how my body looked, the way I was moving, the way I was playing defense and how hard I was competing,” Young said. “The more teams I saw, the more teams that got intrigued.”
Despite going undrafted, Young’s various workouts drew attention from several teams that were offering him a solid chance at an NBA future, one created by a wrinkle in the league’s collective bargaining agreement.
NBA teams can now have two roster spots for players to shift between an NBA franchise and its affiliate in the G-League, formerly the NBA Development League. A player can fluctuate and spend as many as 45 days with the NBA team, a time in which they get an NBA salary on a pro-rata basis. Under that agreement, a player is guaranteed at least $75,000 and can earn as much as $275,000.
After weighing his options — and after his agent, Seth Avery Cohen, negotiated a favorable deal that allowed his contract to become an NBA contract at any time — Young chose the Wizards.
In his first four games in the NBA’s summer league in Las Vegas, he has excelled at times and struggled in others, averaging nine points per game on 33.3 percent shooting.